Welcome to the March edition of Endeavoring!

Trade show season is underway, as the Endeavor team is coming off a successful trip to Las Vegas for the Channel Partners Conference and Expo earlier this month. We were happy to see some old friends and make many new ones. After such a great trip, the team is eager to get back to Vegas for the ISC West Conference and Expo, April 6th through 8th, at the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Endeavor will be exhibiting booth 18144, so we hope to see you if you can make it! For more information including registration details for ISC West, along with the Chicago-based National Restaurant Association Show coming up in May, check out the Upcoming Events section.

Also, don't miss the latest of Endeavor's many philanthropic efforts, as this month's press release details the company's support of four students from College of Charleston, the alma mater of Endeavor's CEO, Justin McLain, who traveled to poverty stricken areas of Honduras as part of the Microfinance Brigade program. The program, aimed at empowering these communities with financial education and opportunities to obtain low interest loans to use toward investment opportunities, provided students with invaluable experience for their future careers. You can review the complete release below in the Company News Section.

Finally, this month's spotlight examines Endeavor's evolution over the last nine years. As the landscape of the industry has changed with the introduction of emerging technologies, the needs of End Users and Customers have changed as well. The article explores how Endeavor has, likewise, adapted to meet the needs of customers throughout the industry's evolution. You won't want to miss it!

We hope you enjoy this month's edition! See you next month!

Your Team at Endeavor
editor@endeavortelecom.com

ENDEAVOR SUPPORTS COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN PROGRAM AIMED AT PROVIDING FINANCIAL EDUCATION TO POVERTY-STRICKEN COMMUNITIES IN HONDURAS

Endeavor is proud to announce its sponsorship of four students from the College of Charleston, the alma mater of Endeavor's Chief Executive Officer Justin McLain, in their trip to Honduras for the Microfinance Brigade program whose objective is empowering impoverished communities with opportunities to obtain low interest loans to invest in coffee bean farms or other potential income generating enterprises Read the Rest

Endeavoring to Evolve

The growth experienced by Endeavor over the last nine years has been nothing short of remarkable. From the proliferation of broadband into homes and businesses across North America, to the explosion of VoIP technology, and through the economic recession that began to impact not only the industry but the entire country over the last two years, Endeavor has grown steadily in revenue, headcount, and in its services. Early on, it was realized that, in order to meet the needs of customers in the ever-changing landscape of the industry and its rapidly emerging technologies, Endeavor must constantly evolve, adapting its services and the very structure of its company to meet the those needs. This article explores the evolution of Endeavor over the years and its emergence as the leading wholesale provider of outsourced professional services.

In the early days of Endeavor, most installation deployments were rather straightforward scopes, as the company concentrated mostly on the thousands of weekly installation and maintenance dispatches for its customer base of CLECs, which consisted primarily of demarc extensions and installations for POTS, DSL, and T1 service. Similarly, the documentation provided for Field Engineers, the training requirements, and the tools available in the company's enterprise management system, ESP (Endeavor Service Portal), were also focused on these verticals. Should one compare today's versions of these items within Endeavor's daily workflow to those of the company's early days, he would notice a striking change. The documentation has adapted to the more advanced, often highly complex nature of the requirements of our customers, and the training and ESP applications are much more robust to ensure the Field Engineers (FEs) and staff are provided the preparation and tools with which to execute dispatches with the highest possible quality.

While Endeavor still performs large scale deployments that may involve traditional access mediums for voice and wide area network data, the onsite requirements have changed a great deal. End-Users are demanding more from their providers, including the integration and installation of additional verticals such as Point-of-Sales systems, security equipment and applications, and other services such as access control, wireless connectivity, and VoIP. Endeavor has also taken on increasingly more complex deployments, ranging from those which require the coordination of hundreds of FEs across North America completing multi-day, sometimes month-long build-outs that, in many cases, require the coordination of FEs traveling across the country for special scope projects.

Many of Endeavor's current projects also require post-installation deliverables, ranging from digital photos, in-depth site surveys and analysis, and higher level test equipment and ESP tools. As a response to this, Endeavor's Engineering group - which was once responsible for pricing out and designing projects during the RFP process and the operational build-out for upcoming deployments post sales - has now been enhanced with the creation of a separate Operations Engineering group. This allows the Sales Engineering group to focus solely on supporting Endeavor ‘s customers in designing and winning new bids while the Ops Engineering team can focus on creating and enhancing the onsite documentation, training, and ESP tools needed to ensure Endeavor staff and field engineers are able to support customer deployments with expertise and efficiency.

Endeavor's customers have changed a great deal over the years as well. During the first few years after the company's inception, its customer base comprised mostly sub $100 million CLECs providing traditional access such as POTS, DSL, or T1 service. Working with these early customers, all of whom Endeavor still works with in one form or another, was much different than it is today. In those days, Endeavor management enjoyed intimate relationships with every member of our customers' management teams. While Endeavor still prides itself on strong ties to key members of each account, many of Endeavor's customers today are multibillion dollar enterprises with tens of thousands of employees.

Working with these types of huge enterprises and the increasingly complex nature of their deployments and deliverables created the need for Endeavor to change the nature with which it interacted with customers. Therefore the Account Management group - a team who primarily served as an enhanced customer advocacy team - has evolved into a traditional Project Management Office (PMO). In the last six months, Endeavor has enhanced its PMO with numerous additional seasoned Project Managers, well versed in PMP practices, who possess the sophisticated skill set required to effectively interact with such large accounts and implement the operational processes required to successfully execute the increasingly more complicated projects.

Endeavor has learned a great deal over past year as we've taken on more and more enterprise accounts with increasingly challenging requirements for field engineers and staff. The key to the company's growth, however, has been to embrace these changes, not only within our customer base but also in the ever-evolving landscape of the industry. Its ability to adapt - in its processes, tools, training, documentation, and even the company's operational infrastructure - based on the evolution of its customers, the industry, and emerging technologies, is what makes Endeavor so unique. It's been an exciting, though often challenging odyssey since those early days, and Endeavor's dedicated, hard-working team of Field Engineers, staff, and management looks forward to the ongoing journey, as the company's growth will continue for many, many years to come.

ISC West
April 6-8, 2011
Sands Expo & Convention Center; Las Vegas, NV; Booth 18144
Click here to register for the show!

National Restaurant Association Show 2011
May 21-24, 2011
McCormick Place; Chicago, IL; Booth 6268
Click here to register for the show!

Electronic Security Expo
June 6-10, 2011
Charlotte Convention Center; Charlotte, NC; Booth 905
Click here to register for the show!